Robot cats fight each other in family restaurants in Japan

Robots serving as waiters have recently been seen in family restaurants across Japan, all as a means of limiting direct contact between staff and customers during the pandemic.

Most of these are simple delivery robots, the robot carries your order on a tray and brings it from the kitchen to your table. Other restaurants have chosen to equip robots with tablets that help them communicate with more personality as well as facial expressions.

But there is a robot developed by the Chinese robotics company called Pudu, which is shaped like a cat and is called BellaBot. This robot has become a sensation in many restaurants in Japan because, being equipped with a tablet that shows its facial expressions, it has kitten ears and adds a “meow” at the end of each sentence.

Although their appearance alone is enough to make them popular, the most curious thing about these cat robots is that they “fight” with each other.

These feline robots are designed to avoid “bumping” into humans and obstacles using their built-in infrared sensor and 3D camera, but it’s not the same if they run into another feline robot. When one obstructs the other’s path, they start yelling at each other saying things like “get out of my way, meow!”

You could say it’s a technical malfunction in their evasion system, or maybe the restaurant aisles were congested and they had a hard time avoiding each other. However, customers like to see this type of situation and many attribute it to the territorial nature of cats, it does not matter if it is a robot, a cat will always be a cat.

Many people have shared videos of these “cat fights” and many have responded that they had witnessed similar battles and were already looking forward to it as an additional performance of going out to eat. Maybe the next time you pass by a family restaurant in Japan, you will meet some robot cats that will be happy to help you, but they don’t get along with each other and end up “fighting” meow!